Dryad is a high-performance, general-purpose, distributed-computing engine that simplifies the task of implementing distributed applications on clusters of computers running a Windows® operating system. DryadLINQ enables developers to implement Dryad applications in managed code by using an extended version of the LINQ programming model and API. The academic release of Dryad and DryadLINQ provides the software necessary to develop DryadLINQ applications and to run them on a Windows HPC Server 2008 cluster. The academic release includes documentation and code samples.

They also launched Project Trident , a workflow workbench, which is available for download:

Project Trident: A Scientific Workflow Workbench is a set of tools—based on the Windows Workflow Foundation—for creating and running data analysis workflows. It addresses scientists’ need for a flexible and powerful way to analyze large and diverse datasets, and share their results. Trident Management Studio provides graphical tools for running, managing, and sharing workflows. It manages the Trident Registry, schedules workflow jobs, and monitors local or remote workflow execution. For large data sets, Trident can run multiple workflows in parallel on a Windows HPC Server 2008 cluster. Trident provides a framework to add runtime services and comes with services such as provenance and workflow monitoring. The Trident security model supports users and roles that allows scientists to control access rights to their workflows.

GrayWulf builds on the work of Jim Gray, a Microsoft Research scientist and pioneer in database and transaction processing research. It also pays homage to Beowulf, the original computer cluster developed at NASA using “off-the-shelf” computer hardware.